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Learning Resources

Planning Processes

Planning for Higher Education Journal

“Be Prepared” for Policy Windows

 How can universities overcome the institutional inertia that impedes successful innovation and change?
Conference Recordings

2020 Foresight

 In this presentation, we'll demonstrate a step by step how-to for you to apply on your own campus with a vivid description of deliverables, tools, and 'gotchas.'
Webinar Recordings

2020 Virtual SCUP Excellence Awards Presentation and Jury Conversation

 We invite you to watch the 2020 virtual SCUP Excellence Awards presentation and jury conversation. The Excellence Awards program recognizes and applauds institutions and organizations whose planning achievements exemplify excellence and dedication in higher education campus planning.
Example Plans

2023–29 Educational Master Plan Development Timeline

 This timeline highlights opportunities for community input to the educational master plan’s development.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Collaborative, Ongoing University Strategic Planning Framework

 Planners at Cleveland State University describe that institution’s highly communicative and participatory strategic planning process.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A DIY Campus Preservation Plan

 A for-credit academic class of graduate students gets involved with UMW’s campus heritage and works to integrate it with the overall campus master planning process.
ebook

A Guide to Planning for Change

 The enhanced planning model in this book recognizes the many internal, external, up, down, and sideways forces, challenges, and opportunities facing higher education
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Guide to Planning for Change
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Master Facilities Planning Process That Focuses on ROI

 In a time when public funding is decreasing, it is advantageous to develop capital improvement plans that demonstrate how to achieve maximum financial benefits.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Model for Creating a Campus Sustainability Plan

 Institutions of higher education have a special obligation to lead sustainability efforts in order to provide the next generation of young adults with the information and tools needed to take on the challenges of the future.
Conference Recordings

A Mountain Climber’s Guide to Scrambling Through Change

 This session will discuss how to take key climbing skills—assessing a changing environment and determining which tools, resources, and expertise are needed to manage change—and apply them to higher education.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Practical Guide to Environmental Scanning: Approaches, Sources, and Selected Techniques
ebook

A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher Education

A resource for anyone engaged in college or university strategic planning, and an excellent primer for planning committees. This second edition also contains new strategies for using an institution’s strategic plan during times of institutional upheaval, and additional techniques for jump-starting various parts of the planning process.

Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Primer on Environmental Scanning in Higher Education
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Resource and Planning Toolkit for Universities in Africa

 There is a significant gap in the level of development of higher education processes and structures between the institutions of the developing world and the well-established universities of places like North America and Europe.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Rubric for Campus Heritage Planning

 The idea is to make architectural preservation a part of the living progress of the institution.
Conference Presentations

A Survival Guide to Planning and Executing Phased Renovations
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Tribute to Achievement and Excellence

 The society’s 2012 awards recognize and applaud individuals and organizations whose achievements exemplify excellence and dedication in planning for higher education.
Example Plans

Academic Master Planning Process Flowchart

 Flowchart showing the process that the institution will undergo to develop its academic master plan.
Conference Presentations

Align Processes and Foster Collaboration to Streamline Planning Engagement

 The newly consolidated Augusta University implemented an annual planning and resource alignment process to streamline procedures and integrate strategic efforts across the institution.
Tool

An Integrated Approach to Scenario Planning

 No one can predict the future. That doesn’t mean it needs to be a total surprise. This toolkit will walk you step-by-step through scenario planning with instructions, examples, and worksheets that you can use to start scenario planning at your institution immediately.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

An Integrative Model for College and University Programs

 A new method for program planning is proposed, based on identifying and benchmarking “student-winners” and “student-qualifiers,” that may find its most appropriate use in vertically-integrated planning within an academic unit such as a business school.
Example Plans

Annual Planning Guide for Academic Affairs Offices/Programs

 This document provides an overview of the annual academic planning process at the college, with guidance on how to contribute.
Conference Presentations

Apply Design Thinking to Strategic and Academic Plan Development
Conference Recordings

Better Value and Outcomes through Integrative Design

 In this session, we'll share our results and challenges with the Integrative Design Process (IDP) at Princeton, and show how you can use an IDP to realize better value and outcomes for your campus project.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Campus Crisis Management
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Strategic Mergers in Higher Education
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: Transforming Higher Education in Asia and Africa

 The book describes the author’s work over the past thirty years advising governments and universities in eight countries, providing case studies that focus on the challenges, failures, and successes in planning for change at twelve universities. The author explores themes, policies, and strategies that emerged, and provides widely applicable lessons for bringing about change, especially in using strategic planning as the vehicle for it.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Book Review: What Makes a Strategic Plan Strategic?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Breaking Barriers

 The University of West Georgia, toward dismantling silo thinking and promoting a sense of ownership within the workplace, formed a cross-divisional group: The Barriers Team. It was part of an initiative to recognize and encourage employee engagement, develop operational efficiencies and effectiveness, and eliminate obstructions to staff success.
Example Plans

Budget Process Flowchart

 Flowchart showing the budget planning process at the university.
Example Plans

Calendar to Develop Annual Plans & Budgets for the 2022–23 Academic Year

 The college recently redesigned its planning and budgeting process to strengthen alignment and improve communications. This calendar depicts the timeline for that process.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Components of a Strategic Plan

 Each element of a strategic plan serves a purpose. But what are those purposes? And how do the elements connect?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Crafting an Innovation Landscape

 The Innovation Landscape Framework is a tool for the integrated planning of initiatives that support innovation across campuses.
Conference Recordings

Designing an Inclusive Engagement Process for Diverse Campus Representation

 In this session, presenters share their layered, inclusive planning process that engages and empowers campus and community constituents to celebrate cultural expression through the built environment.
Report

Designing and Developing Mature, Mission-Aligned Online Academic Programs at Jesuit Institutions

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2019–2020 program. Online education should not be perceived as a distraction of the mission—rather, an enhancement of it.
Webinar Recordings

Destination 2030
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Developing a Four-Year Baccalaureate Degree in Applied Psychology

 What does it take to plan for and move from a two-year to a four-year institution and implement a baccalaureate degree in applied psychology? Here’s how Kwantlen University College (BC) did it.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Developing Scenarios: Linking Environmental Scanning and Strategic Planning

 In this article, we discuss a method for developing and writing scenarios for a college or university. We begin by reviewing the general literature on scenarios; we then detail a scenario development project at Arizona State University. This project, conducted in 1988–89, was Arizona State University's first institution-wide, futures-based planning and scenario development effort.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Disruptive Transition to an Integrated Organizational Planning and Resource Allocation Model

 This is the story of how Glendale Community College in Arizona took intentional steps to integrate its strategic and operational plans with resources and assessment to develop a holistic approach to planning and implementation.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Distance Education

 Learn how a partnership between Florida State and the US Army planned for and implemented tailored MSW degrees.
Conference Recordings

Don’t Get Me Started

 This session will address the university's setbacks, challenges, opportunities, and solutions in launching a shoestring integrated planning process amidst multiple crises.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Educational Innovation and Space Management
Conference Recordings

Entrepreneurial Planning

 Join this session for a facilitated, interactive journey with two college and university leaders that will explore the application of the effectuation model to college planning.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Experiences and Insights from Use of a Design-Build Process in Founding a New Campus

 Design-build was the best choice for K-State Olathe because of the flexibility with regard to unknown users and change stakeholder expectations.
Conference Presentations

Flossing

 This session shares how one institution efficiently integrated and aligned planning and assessment activities with accreditation standards and cycles.
Conference Presentations

From Industrial Wasteland to Modern Campus
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Fully Engaged

 The most effective master plans are those that reflect the myriad voices of the institution. Engagement should be informative, inclusive, meaningful, and fun—and should be the product of an integrated process.
Conference Presentations

Funding the Future in Tough Times

 This session will detail strategies from three separate regional university initiatives to solicit, evaluate, adopt, and fund forward-thinking campus enhancements under significant budgetary constraints.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Getting in the eGame

 The University of Kentucky understood the importance of technology in preparing students for the digital world. With public-private partnerships, it sought opportunities to be an industry leader in leveraging that capacity for its students, faculty, staff, and the community.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Instituting a New Degree Program

 Change in higher education rests on the skills of administrators and their knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of various planning approaches described in this case study.
Example Plans

Institutional Planning Process Infographic
Webinar Recordings

Instructional Economics

 All program decisions have financial consequences—and some may surprise you. We will share a methodology for analyzing instructional economics and strategies for incorporating this data into the program decision-making process for long-term financial health.

This is part two of a three-part program series, “Integrated Planning to Build a Thriving Academic Program Portfolio.”

Conference Recordings

Integrating Planning at the Organizational, Unit, and Individual Level

 This session will demonstrate how our Integrated Performance Excellence Framework (IPEF) guides planning at multiple levels of the institution, all of which are tied to our strategic policy, plan, and processes.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Is Higher Education Ready for Its Learners?

 With sweeping shifts in recruitment and retention of students throughout higher education, Northern Kentucky University committed to a pivot. Its new student framework emphasizes student support and academic delivery driven by strategic decisions and data rather than by impulsivity. Their Success by Design framework encouraged innovations that focused the university on meeting learners where they were.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

It Takes a (Virtual) Village

 This large community college successfully embraced virtual communication platforms and moved forward with a viable 10-year plan during a global health crisis, economic turbulence, and technological change.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Juggling Chainsaws

 The numerous benefits of these processes can be realized only when the institution recognizes and plans for the different, sometimes conflicting perspectives they bring to high-stakes discussions.
Conference Recordings

Keynote: Beyond Innovation

 William Lindner has led transformational initiatives at every level of government and education with this consistent message: “Tear the Page Out.” This session will demonstrate an approach to attacking big challenges by empowering audacious creativity inside tradition-bound institutions.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

KPIs Drive Strategic Planning and Execution

 Quantitative tools are essential for developing a framework, but properly identifying stakeholders and keeping them involved is what connects planning to execution.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Launching Successful Planning Efforts
Webinar Recordings

Leveraging New Tools to Revolutionize Transformation Efforts and Outcomes

 This webinar showcases a collection of revolutionary tools being used in transformation campaigns. These tools have dramatically improved the experience and effectiveness of teams and coalitions engaged in strategy crafting and orchestration.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Mission-Aligned Online Academic Programs at US Jesuit Institutions

 A custom survey measured the process maturity involved in planning, implementing, and evaluating online offerings that reflected the principles of Ignatian Pedagogy.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Modifying the Strategic Planning Engine

 Using the Strategic Planning Engine model resulted in a more objective, replicable, scalable, flexible, and transparent planning process with useful and relevant results.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

No-Brainer or Brain-Twister?

 While there is no one right way to link planning and budgeting, there is good practice: what works to influence behavior in the direction of institutional goals, supported by strong leadership.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Nurturing Your Capital Project

 By following the progression of steps needed to complete a typical capital improvement project detailed here, even the most complex project can be accomplished effectively and efficiently.
Conference Recordings

Observed Themes in Higher Education Planning and Design From the 2021 Excellence Award Entries and Recognition of Winners

 The 2021 jury members will share observations and trends from this year’s entries and acknowledge award recipients. Award certificates will be distributed at the end of the program.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Optimizing for Growth

 Thomas Jefferson University focused on culture, communications, and collaboration during a transformational period of combining institutions.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Organizing Financial Information to Support University Planning and Analysis

 Before investing in complex and costly new technologies, first consider whether your institution would benefit from a redesigned chart of accounts.
Conference Recordings

Pivot! Planning During a Pandemic and Staying on Course

 In this session, we'll share best practices and lessons learned in virtually adapting the cycle of planning and budgeting processes to an uncertain, volatile, and virtual environment.
Conference Presentations

Planning and Budget Alignment
Conference Recordings

Planning for Equity-Centered Transformation

 We must abandon the traditional three- to five-year planning cycle in favor of combining a macro-planning approach with shorter-term sprints (quick-turnaround scenario planning flexibility) to meet the changing needs of our students and communities.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planning for Instructional Continuity

 Classes can be cancelled because of inclement weather, faculty being unavailable, IT or power outages, pandemic-related closures, and other occurrences. The result of any of these circumstances can be a loss of instruction. St. Joseph’s University developed and applied a best practices guide to ensure the continuation of instruction in the advent of many short-term disruptions.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planning in Academic Departments

 A case study from William Paterson College, where the internal planning office led faculty in departmental planning activities to “stop the sprawl and provide a direction” for the biology department. Can planning be bottom up, with professors designing their own futures?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Planning in Higher Education: A Multiple Scenario Forecasting Approach
Example Plans

Process for Developing the 2018–2023 Strategic Plan

 A detailed overview of the institution’s process and timeline for developing its strategic plan.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Promoting Engagement in Strategic Planning

 Creating a positive, reflective, inclusive, and transparent institutional climate facilitated improved engagement in and ownership of strategic and departmental planning. The process of using FAST goals (frequently discussed, ambitious, specifically measured, and transparent) produced constructive outcomes.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Quickly Building a Bridge

 Executive leadership changes at Northern Michigan University led the interim president, interim provost, and Board of Trustees to call for a bridge plan to clearly articulate strategic work happening throughout campus. This article describes how the university was able to develop an interim strategic plan with broad campus engagement in less than half a year.
Example Plans

Realizing “Envision TRU”

 This green paper (a preliminary report of proposals published to stimulate discussion) introduces the primary concepts and advantages of integrated planning, designating it as the approach that will frame the institution’s upcoming strategic planning process.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Redesigning a Budget Model with a Grassroots Approach

 While redesigning a campus budget model could happen relatively quickly from a technical standpoint, time spent in extensive engagement, collaboration, and conversation is key to successful implementation.
Conference Recordings

Reframing Strategic Planning Priorities Through Results-based Strategic Design

 In this session, you will learn how Results-Based Strategic Design (RBSD) can help you supplement, restart, or reframe planning processes at your institution.
Example Plans

Selected Questions for Academic Program Review

 Questions intended to spark discussion amidst teams undertaking program review.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Seven Lessons in Inclusive Campus Design

 Institutions are starting to grapple with histories of developing indigenous lands and the legacy of an able-bodied vernacular within campus design that continues to reinforce in-groups and out-groups.
Conference Presentations

Speed, Efficiency, and Consensus Through the Collaborative Process

 Come learn from our unique approach in which actual users participate in designing an outpatient center on the Nebraska Medical Campus, allowing implementation of new processes and efficiencies known only to medical center staff.
Example Plans

Strategic Plan

 The vision, four pillar goals, and strategies of the college’s strategic plan are presented in an interactive graphic.
Conference Recordings

Strategic Plan Implementation in a VUCA Environment

 In this session, we'll share how Lakehead University developed a phased strategic approach to guide implementation of its strategic plan.
Conference Presentations

Strategic Planning at the Division Level
Webinar Recordings

Strategic Planning That’s Truly Strategic

 What do strategic plans do? What does it mean to be “strategic”? These are among the questions addressed in a recent year-long study of 108 active college and university strategic plans. Hear directly from the researchers as they highlight a few important insights they discovered during their analysis, like how to avoid the many pitfalls of strategic planning and ensure a process focused on strategy and outcomes.
Conference Recordings

Strategic Resource Allocation

 This session will focus on a proven process for fairly and holistically evaluating all current academic programs and support functions to assess their value and contribution to institutional success.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Teetering on the Demographic Cliff, Part 3

 Higher education has faced major changes for some time—COVID-19 accelerated that volatility—and now we’re anticipating the demographic downslope in student enrollment. How and when should institutions mobilize for the difficult work of planning in the face of wrenching change?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Tell Us What You Think

 More than 1,600 students and alumnae provided input through online mapping tools and in-person workshops. Staff and faculty were interviewed in person and via phone. And Instagram was used to reach 6,400 members of the campus community.
Report

The Arc of Integrated Planning

 Adopting integrated planning in higher education can feel like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be! Learn more about integrated planning and how the SCUP Planning Institute can help your college or university do planning better.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

The Future of Planning is . . .

 IE professionals are both translators and integrators—and universities need these people who know how to interpret the data. Within the context of an IIE office, they assist in developing data-informed strategic plans, financial forecasts, enrollment plans, and other assessments of institutional efficacy.
Conference Recordings

The Planning Continuum

 We’ll discuss how Purdue University’s culture of continuous planning leverages data, facility information, and design to engage new stakeholders, implement a campus-wide vision, and fast-track decision making.
Example Plans

The Tuskegee Trajectory

 The university’s strategic plan details five broad goals with supporting strategies and measures for success. Focus centers on student success and leveraging technology for the 21st-century learning experience.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Too Much and Not Enough

 When resources are constrained and enrollment is tightening, it takes thoughtful and strategic involvement of all stakeholders to develop and execute a comprehensive facilities plan.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Totally Virtual

 In the context of a fully online institution, how do you collaborate to strategically plan? You leverage online tools and techniques to keep widely distributed and separated-by-a-distance team members engaged in the process.
Webinar Recordings

Transform Existing Planning and Implementation Processes

 Join us as a panel of experienced leaders provide an overview of a systematic approach for getting started on transformation.
Webinar Recordings

Transformation Best Practices in the Decade Ahead

 Inexorable challenges demand that higher education transform . . . and that transformation needs to start now. Learn more about these challenges and the knowledge, skills, and capabilities an institution needs to transform in the coming decade from the authors of the new book Transforming for Turbulent Times: An Action Agenda for Higher Education Leaders.
Conference Recordings

Transformation in Turbulent Times

 Come learn about our framework for leading transformation, including a checklist for success, case studies in change, and resources for smart planning and strong execution.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Transforming Data into Meaningful Information

 Leaders in two different accreditation regions share best practices and lessons learned from their integrated planning evolution and its impact on operational efficiency and student learning.
ebook

Transforming for Turbulent Times

 Transforming for Turbulent Times: An Action Agenda for Higher Education Leaders can prepare your institution for the new learning ecosystem that will revolutionize work and learning by 2030. This book outlines a proven, eight-step process for planning, leading, navigating, and orchestrating the transformation necessary to thrive in the new world of knowledge, work, and learning. Whatever your role in your college, university, or learning enterprise, you’ll learn the principles, techniques, and actions that will make you indispensable to its transformation in these turbulent times.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

University Strategic Planning and the Foresight/Futures Approach

 Dublin City University has taken the lead in Ireland in terms of its emphasis on strategic planning. Its 2005–2008 strategic plan, Leadership Through Foresight, was part of an ambitious foresight exercise that was aimed at informing subsequent strategic cycles. This article reports on this process in the context of the wider literature examining the value of foresight/futures thinking as applied to universities.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Untangling the History and Procedures of Strategic Planning

 Almost since the time when the concept of strategic planning first appeared in the literature of higher education, its value has been questioned. Do strategic plans help institutions achieve excellence, or are they more likely to gather dust on a shelf? Perspectives are presented through a review of nearly 100 years of the history and theoretical basis for strategic plans.
Partner Content

Your Campus Historic Buildings

 This article will help your team create a checklist to determine decision-making priorities for maintaining your historic buildings.